Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Halberd – Remnants of Crumbling Empires

Featuring members from all over the world,
Halberd is an international death/doom project that recently released their
first full-length album. These 4 tracks span 40 minutes, and while there is
plenty of doom, “Remnants of Crumbling Empires” has some other interesting
things to offer as well. The opening song, “Northern Bloodletting”, features
symphonic orchestrations underneath some of the doomier passages. In addition,
the band can really hit the speed when they need to. They don’t really approach
the speed of some of the faster death metal bands out there, but they give
enough of a boost that the record has some variety in it. It’s similar to how
Autopsy does the death/doom, only Halberd puts more emphasis on the doom than
they do. With that said, the first two songs are much faster than the last two.
“Barghash’s Poison” barely goes into slower passages, instead opting for a more
typical death metal song. It works here because it’s only 5 minutes, and it’s a
great change of pace before the last 2 behemoth tracks on the album. “Northern
Bloodletting” also features a pretty upbeat solo section, but immediately
reverts back to crushing doom. The drumming is huge, and when combined with the
symphonics, gives off a cavernous feel.

The final two tracks on “Remnants of
Crumbling Empires” take a bit of a different approach from the other two. They
are longer, slower, and bring a lot more dread. Interestingly, towards the end
of “Ignorance of Morbidity”, there are some great epic leads. The song fades
out on a solo, which is a bit disappointing because it’s the best part of the
song, and things were really clicking at that point. Likewise, the final track,
“Dead Horses Cavalry” also fades out, and once again, it does so at the best
moment of the song. The riff in the final minute and a half of this tune is the
most impressive on the album, and it will be stuck in your head all day. This
is likely why this song fades out: to leave the listener wanting more.

From a production standpoint, this album is
pretty impressive. The mix isn’t clean, but it’s easy to understand what’s
going on. It has just the right amount of sickness for something in this style.
Vocally, Halberd does it all. There are disgustingly low gutturals, higher
screams, and all sorts of twisted sounds. There’s even some narration later on
in the record. The bass playing isn’t particularly prominent, but there’s
enough low end on the album already. Overall, the sound of this album is quite
fitting to its theme. Death/doom is not a favourite style of mine, but Halberd
shows that, when done properly, it is quite effective. At the end of the day,
the quality of riffs is what is important, and Halberd delivers that time and
again on this record.